The Angry Lawn Gnome's Reviews > Walkaway

tl;dr - This was painful to read, the literary equivalent of shuffling through knee deep wet concrete. I kept expecting it to get better, it didn't.

So, (he asked rhetorically), can William Gibson, Kim Stanley Robinson and Neal Stephenson all be wrong? Based upon the blurbs for this book, yup, yup, yup. Either that or they all read the super secret version that has not yet been released unto the eyes of the profane, since I honestly see no way they read this turkey.

Characters randomly popped in and out of the narrative for no particular reason, characters dropped tedious sermons to each other (and to the reader) without prompting and (again) for no particular reason and the characters were all as flat and uninteresting as cardboard standees. The good guys were all good, good, good, the bad guys all bad, bad, bad. And of course we needed -- had to have -- a diversity checklist for our characters. Except for the bad guys. Since villains can only be, always and forever, white males, in the sort of Calvinism without redemption that is the major theme of the Left in 2017. Virtuous vaginas, problematic penises, and white people suck.

The plot, such as it was, consisted of deux ex machina after deux ex machina, though since the "deux" was "some weird invention we cooked up in our basement via some McGyver shit that was even less believable than the 1980s TV show, oh and we're gonna do it every third page or so," perhaps that should be technologica ex machina? Machina ex machina? Who the fuck knows? Or cares? And transitions? Cory didn't need none of them. 'Cuz there aren't any. I guess Tor can't afford editors these days? 'Cuz there was fuck all in the narrative in this book.

The dialog? Holy fuck. The was the worst best part, in the sense that it was absolutely hilarious, hopefully by intention. I don't think I've read so much 1337 hAx0R speak in years, nor seen the word "pwn" used outside of Call of Duty lobbies on XBox, circa 2011. Cory is down with the Fellow Kids, yessirree bobber. Cory gonna pwn u spawn camping zotta n00bz with his 360 no scope insta-kill, cuz he is pure d MLG 4 real and 4 life.



So, that part, at least, was fucking hilarious. Like I said, hopefully by intent. Legit belly laughs, though by the end of the book it had taken on overtones of cringe. You can only read about "pwning" this or that so often, after all. Attacks of giggles get downright painful if taken to extremes.

Two stars, mostly for those chuckles.

Oh, and how could I forget the most bizarre thought that occurred to me? The one that kept me marginally involved in the text from start to finish, drinking coffee and snorting with glee, instead of DNF-ing this turkey half way or even less through it? Well, early on and through the book, the following thoughts occurred me:

Where had I read a book about the talented walking out of society and going their own way?
Where had I read about about setting up a place apart for the anointed to go to once they separated?
Where had I read a book chock full of two dimensional, humorless, sermon dropping characters?
Where had I read a book where the good guys were always and forever good, the bad guys always and forever bad, and you never needed a score card to tell 'em apart§?
Where had I read a book of pseudo-philosophy where the opponent's arguments are always presented in the most ridiculous and straw-man terms?
(view spoiler)[Where had I read a book where a main character was kidnapped, tortured and released via some of the most preposterous plot nonsense I'd ever seen? (hide spoiler)]

Hmmm. I said to myself. Then suddenly, was all like, Hot damn! Yup. We're talking Atlas Shrugged, updated and inverted in Walkaway. And I'll bet if I put my thinking cap on I could come up with more parallelisms, but,meh, why bother? I think that's enough.

Just substitute a fairy tale like Objectivism for a fairy tale like post scarcity economics, just switch your bad guy gauge from "Looters" to "zottas," keep the kinky sex, keep the altogether completely predictable plot, keep the action boring and ridiculous dialogue, keep the characters monologuing away, keep the gubbiment the source of all that is eeevvulll, and hey presto magico, you get from Atlas Shrugged to Hipster Shrugged, err, Walkaway in a few simple steps.

Feel free to try this at home. Maybe you'll get a publishing contract with Tor out of it. Though, come to think of it, I wonder how the folks at Tor, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of McMillian, Inc., which in turn is a wholly owned subsidiary of German based multi-national corporation Holtzbrink (that last a truly big-ass 4 real multinational conglomerate run by "zottas," presumably) feel about a book where one of the central themes (repeated ad nauseum) is how icky poo that whole copyright business is? I guess Cory is okay taking their money and not feeling like a hypocrite for doing so, because, well, umm, err, ahhh, ... because he just doesn't.

Ahh, madness, madness, let us end this silliness on that note.

§ - The lone exception to this one being Eddie Willers in Atlas Shrugged. No such character existed to elicit the sympathy he did in Atlas Shrugged in Walkaway, sadly. Might have made the prose slightly less turgid in Doctorow's book. And also makes it pretty sad when Ayn Rand "pwns" Doctorow in terms of creating likable characters, even if it is only one, no?